Chapter 2: The Same Evening
The cold seeped through the floorboards and into her bones. Abbey lay perfectly still in the dark, Toby’s arm a warm, heavy band across her ribs. His breathing was deep and even, the sleep of the guiltless. She stared at the ceiling, where the predawn light painted the pine beams a sickly grey.
Her body was a map of what had happened. A dull ache pulsed between her legs. A sharper, brighter pain marked the places his mouth had been on her neck, her breasts. The torn sweater was a crumpled secret on the floor. She could smell him on her skin—whiskey, sweat, sex—a scent that had soaked into her pores, cutting through the cabin’s clean pine.
I know what you really want.
The words looped, a taunt and a triumph. He knew. And he had taken it. The relief of that was so profound it felt like grief.
Toby shifted in his sleep, nuzzling into the crook of her neck. His lips brushed her skin, a soft, sleepy kiss. It was affection. It was love. It made her want to scream. His hand slid down from her ribs, settling on her stomach with a familiar, comforting weight.
And she felt it. A slow, treacherous leak, internal warmth becoming a damp, cold reality on her thigh. Edmund’s cum, seeping out of her, here in Toby’s bed.
A nausea, sharp and acrid, rose in her throat. She had to move. She had to get clean.
“Toby,” she whispered, her voice rusted. “I need to… use the bathroom.”
He made a soft, incoherent sound, but his arm tightened, holding her in place. “Mm. Stay. S’cold.”
“I’ll be quick.” She tried to wriggle free, the movement making the dampness spread.
His eyes opened. In the grey light, they were soft, cloudy with sleep. He looked at her, and for a heart-stopping moment, she was certain he could see it all—the guilt, the betrayal, the other man’s spend cooling on her skin. He kissed her neck again, slower this time. His hand drifted lower, from her stomach to the waistband of her leggings.
Panic, pure and electric, locked her muscles. “Toby, don’t.”
“Why not?” he murmured, his voice thick. “Missed you last night.” His fingers dipped beneath the elastic, seeking the warmth between her legs.
He touched her there.
He stilled.
The room didn’t get quieter; the silence simply changed texture, becoming brittle, sharp enough to cut. His breathing stopped. Abbey felt his whole body go rigid against hers. She closed her eyes, waiting for the explosion.
It didn’t come. He withdrew his hand slowly. The mattress shifted as he sat up. She couldn’t look at him. She stared at the wall, at a knot in the pine that looked like a screaming face.
“Get up,” he said. His voice was flat. Dead.
“Toby, I can explain—”
“Get. Up.”
She climbed out of bed, her legs unsteady. She faced him, pulling the sheet around herself like a shroud. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his back to her, head bowed. His shoulders were tense slabs under his thin t-shirt.
“Explain, then,” he said to the floor. “Explain why you’re wet with another man.”
The crudeness of the words, coming from him, was a shock. There was no gentle euphemism. No ‘us’ or ‘we’. It was biological, forensic. Wet with another man.
The lies she’d prepared—a nightmare, a sudden panic, the storm—withered on her tongue. They were insults to his intelligence, to the awful, tangible evidence.
“It’s not… it wasn’t…”
“I heard you.” The words were so quiet she almost missed them. Then he turned his head, and his profile was etched in the grim dawn light. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped. “I got up for water. I heard the couch. I heard… everything.”
The floor seemed to tilt. She gripped the sheet tighter. He had been there. Standing in the dark hall, listening to her being fucked by another man. Hearing her choked cries, the crude slap of skin, the animal sounds she didn’t know she could make.
“You listened?” The question was out before she could stop it, laced with a horrified accusation.
A bitter, shattered laugh escaped him. “What was I supposed to do, Abbey? Burst in? Give a fucking round of applause?” He stood up suddenly, turning to face her. His eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. They burned with a pain so raw it was like looking into a open wound. “I stood there. I stood there and I listened to my girlfriend come for another man. Twice.”
Each word was a hammer blow. She had nothing. No defense. The mask was not just cracked; it was pulverized. He saw the monster, and it was uglier than she’d ever imagined.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. It was ash in her mouth.
“Sorry?” He took a step toward her. He wasn’t a big man, not like Edmund, but in that moment he seemed to fill the room, vibrating with a furious, hurt energy. “You’re sorry? He tears your clothes off and fucks you on my couch, in my house, and you’re sorry?”
“It’s not your house, it’s a rental,” she said, the inane correction slipping out. A pathetic attempt to deflect.
He stared at her, incredulous. Then his expression changed. The anger bled away, leaving something worse: a cold, calculating clarity. He looked her up and down, from her tangled hair to her feet on the cold floor. He looked at the sheet she held against her, the body that belonged to him, that he’d loved gently for three years, now marked by someone else.
“Why?” The single word hung between them.
She shook her head. She had no answer that wouldn’t destroy him further. Because he saw me. Because he made me feel real. Because I’m broken.
“Was it good?” Toby asked, his voice now dangerously calm. “Was he better than me?”
“Don’t.”
“Was he?”
“It wasn’t about that!”
“It’s always about that!” he shouted, the control snapping. He ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. “He’s what, Abbey? More exciting? More dangerous? You want a rough fuck? You want to be treated like shit?” He moved closer again, his gaze dropping to her neck, to the bruise blooming there. His own face tightened. “You think I can’t give you that?”
The question shifted the gravity in the room. This wasn’t a path to forgiveness. This was a door into something else entirely.
“Toby, no. That’s not… you’re not…”
“I’m not him,” he finished, his voice dropping back to that eerie calm. “You’re right. I’m the one who loves you. I’m the one who made you coffee every morning and remembered your mother’s birthday and talked about fucking kids with you.” He spit the last word. “But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you don’t want to be loved. Maybe you want to be used.”
He reached out, not to hit her, but to take the edge of the sheet she was clinging to. He pulled it, not hard, but with an inexorable force. She resisted for a second, then let go. It pooled at her feet. She stood before him, naked, shivering, exposed in the cruel light.
His eyes tracked over her. The love in his gaze was gone, replaced by a bleak, clinical assessment. He saw the bites, the redness between her thighs, the whole brutal catalog of her betrayal written on her skin.
“He left his marks,” Toby observed. “But he didn’t stay, did he? He got what he wanted and he walked away. Because that’s what men like him do.” He took the final step, closing the distance until she could feel the heat coming off his body. “I stay, Abbey. Even now. I’m still here.”
He brought his hand up and wrapped it around her throat. It wasn’t a violent squeeze. It was a firm, possessive hold, his thumb resting on the pulse hammering in her neck. Her breath hitched. This wasn’t Edmund’s dominance, which had felt like liberation. This felt like a sentence.
“You think I can’t make you feel?” he whispered, his face inches from hers. His eyes were dark, pupils swallowing the blue. “You think because I’m nice, I’m weak? You gave my fucking kindness back to me as a weapon.”
His other hand came down between her legs, his fingers pressing into the slick, violated flesh. She flinched, but his grip on her throat tightened, just a fraction, holding her still. “He was here,” Toby said, his voice shaking with a mixture of revulsion and a perverse, thrilling arousal. “I can feel him. Is this what you like? Being so full of one man you can still feel him when the next one touches you?”
“Stop it,” she choked out.
“No.” The word was final. He leaned in, his mouth beside her ear. His breath was hot. “You don’t get to tell me to stop. You lost that right. You want a man who takes what he wants? You’ve got one.”
He released her throat, only to grab her by the hips and spin her around, shoving her forward onto the unmade bed. Her face pressed into the pillow that still smelled of his shampoo. She tried to push up, but his weight came down on her, knees forcing her legs apart. One hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. The other was busy, shoving his own sleep pants down.
There was no tenderness. No preamble. He guided himself, not to her entrance, but up through the slickness, rubbing his cock along the cleft of her ass, through the wet evidence of the other man, groaning at the sensation. “Fuck, you’re a mess. His mess.”
Then he positioned himself, and shoved into her from behind.
It was dry where he entered, a shocking, painful friction. She cried out, a raw sound muffled by the pillow. He was smaller than Edmund, but the anger made him ruthless. He didn’t wait for her body to adjust. He set a relentless, punishing rhythm, each thrust a jolt that slammed her into the mattress.
“Is this what you needed?” he grunted, his hips pistoning. “This what makes you feel real?”
Tears streamed from her eyes, hot and silent. This wasn’t the transcendent violation she’d experienced with Edmund. This was punishment. This was ownership. This was love twisted into something vile and hurt.
“You’re mine,” he hissed, his voice breaking. “Say it.”
She couldn’t. The sobs were locked in her chest.
He fucked her harder, his hand leaving her hair to grip her hip, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Say it, Abbey! Who do you belong to?”
The pain was sharp, bright. It cut through the numbness. “You!” she gasped into the pillow. “You!”
“Again!”
“You! Toby! I belong to you!” The words were torn from her, a surrender.
His pace faltered. He drove into her once, twice more, deeper, and then groaned, a long, shuddering sound of release and agony. He collapsed on top of her, his weight pinning her, his face buried in her mangled hair. She felt the hot pulse of him inside her, a second claim laid over the first.
They lay there, joined, breathing in ragged unison. The room was silent except for the sound of their lungs laboring. The light had strengthened, turning the grey to a pale, indifferent white.
Slowly, he pulled out of her. The ache was different now—sore, abraded. He rolled off her, lying on his back beside her, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t move. She felt hollowed out, a vessel for consecutive violences.
“I heard you with him,” he said again, to the beams above. “And the worst part… the part that makes me sick… is that I got hard. Listening to my girl get ruined by another man, I got so fucking hard I thought I’d pass out.”
She turned her head to look at him. A single tear tracked from the corner of his eye into his hairline.
“I wanted to kill him,” Toby continued, his voice monotone. “I wanted to kill you. But more than that… I wanted to be him. I wanted to be the one making you sound like that.” He finally looked at her, his eyes devastated. “What does that make me, Abbey?”
She had no answer. She had turned her gentle boyfriend into a stranger, into a mirror of her own dark cravings. She had broken them both.
He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed. His back was to her, tense and pale. “Get in the shower. Get clean.” The command was empty of heat now, just exhaustion.
She moved like an automaton, gathering her torn clothes from the floor, walking stiffly to the bathroom. She locked the door. She turned the water as hot as she could stand and stood under the spray, scrubbing at her skin with a washcloth until it was raw and pink. She couldn’t scrub away the memory. Of either of them.
When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, the bedroom was empty. She could hear low voices from the main room. Toby and Edmund.
Dread, cold and heavy, settled in her gut. She dressed quickly in jeans and a high-necked sweater, hiding the marks. She took a breath, steadying herself against the doorframe, then walked out.
They were at the small kitchen table. Two mugs of coffee steamed between them. The fire was built up again, roaring healthily. The storm had passed, leaving a world of blinding white silence outside the windows.
Edmund glanced at her as she entered. His expression was unreadable. He looked fresh, clean-shaven, dressed in dark jeans and a black sweater. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. An acknowledgment. A conspiracy.
Toby looked wrecked. His eyes were haunted, his face drawn. He held his mug with both hands as if for warmth. “Abbey,” he said. His voice was calm, but it was the calm of a deep, frozen lake. “Edmund says the plows will be through by noon. The road will be clear.”
“Okay,” she said, her own voice faint.
“I think it’s best if he leaves then,” Toby continued, not looking at Edmund. “And I think… I think we need to talk. Just us.”
Edmund took a slow sip of his coffee. His hazel eyes watched Toby over the rim of the mug. There was no gloating there, no victory. Just a watchful, animal stillness. He was the catalyst, and now he was observing the reaction.
“Of course,” Edmund said, setting his mug down. “I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
The undercurrent in the room was a live wire. Toby had heard everything, but had Edmund heard them this morning? Did he know about the second act of possession, the desperate, angry fuck on the bed? The thought made her want to vomit.
The next few hours passed in a surreal, slow-motion pantomime. Edmund packed his small bag in the guest room. Toby cooked eggs in silence, the sizzle of the pan the only sound. Abbey set the table, her hands trembling so badly the forks clattered. They ate without tasting, the food like sawdust.
Finally, the sound of a diesel engine grumbled outside. The plow. The world was reconnecting, demanding they return to their roles.
Edmund carried his bag to the door. He shrugged into his coat, a heavy, waxed canvas thing. He looked at Toby, then at Abbey.
“Thanks for the shelter,” he said, the words meaningless.
Toby just nodded, jaw tight.
Edmond’s gaze lingered on Abbey. It wasn’t a lover’s look. It was the look of an archaeologist who had found a fascinating, ruined artifact. He saw the high neck of her sweater, the pallor of her skin, the shadows under her eyes. He saw everything.
“Take care of yourself, Abbey,” he said. A command. A warning.
Then he turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the brilliant, painful white. The door swung shut behind him, cutting off the blast of cold air. They listened to his footsteps crunch through the snow, growing fainter, until there was only silence.
Toby walked to the window, watching the figure trek toward the plowed road, a dark smudge against the infinity of white.
“He’s gone,” Toby said, not turning around.
Abbey stood in the center of the room, the site of her first sin, and waited.
Toby turned. His face was a mask of resignation and a terrible, stubborn love. “I don’t know if I can ever forget what I heard,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I can ever look at you without seeing… that. But I love you.
But I love you.
The words hung in the pine-scented air, a fragile axiom in a room that had witnessed the collapse of everything. They did not feel like absolution. They felt like the first knot in a noose she would gladly wear. Abbey stood, unable to move, the cold from the floorboards seeping through her socks. The roaring fire seemed to give no heat.
Toby finally turned from the window, the blinding white landscape framing him like a ghost. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry, the clarity from earlier now muddied by a profound exhaustion. He looked at the two empty mugs on the table, the ruins of a tense breakfast. He looked at the couch, its cushions still deformed from the weight of two bodies the night before.
“I can smell him in this room,” Toby stated flatly. It wasn’t an accusation. It was an observation, as neutral as noting the weather. “It’s in the leather. It’s in the fucking air.”
Abbey inhaled. Beneath the pine smoke, she caught it too: the faint, masculine scent of Edmund’s skin, the memory of whiskey and sweat. It was a ghost, imprint.
“I can’t scrub that out,” he continued, walking slowly toward her. Each step was measured. “I could burn the couch. Open every window. It wouldn’t matter.” He stopped an arm’s length away. His gaze was a physical weight. “It’s in you, too. Isn’t it?”
She nodded, a minute dip of her chin. Her throat was too tight for words.
“I felt it.” His voice dropped to a ragged whisper. “Inside you. When I… earlier.” He couldn’t name what he’d done. The angry, punishing possession on the bed. “I was so fucking angry, Abbey. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to hurt me. I wanted to fuck his memory right out of your cunt.”
The crudeness was a weapon he was still learning to wield. It jarred the quiet room.
“Did it work?” she managed to ask, her own voice a scratch.
A sad, broken smile touched his lips. “No. All I did was mix us all together. Now it’s just… a mess. Him, me, you. We’re all churned up in there.” He ran a hand over his face. “I keep hearing it. The sound of the couch springs. Your voice. It’s on a loop in my head.”
“Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me what you heard.”
He flinched. “Why? So you can relive it?”
“So I can share it,” she corrected, a desperate courage seizing her. “So it’s not just your ghost. It’s ours.”
He stared at her, shocked. Then his shoulders slumped. Defeat. Or surrender. He walked to the fireplace, leaning his forearms on the rough stone mantel, staring into the flames.
“You were so quiet at first,” he began, his voice hollow, distant. “Just whispers. Then… a gasp. Sharp. Like he’d hurt you. I almost came in then. But you didn’t cry out. You just… breathed. This shaky, fucking unbearable breath.” He mimicked it, a quick, reedy inhalation that made Abbey’s skin prickle. “Then I heard him. His voice was low. Gruff. He said, ‘Open your mouth.’ And you… you did. I heard it. A wet, sucking sound. You were letting him fuck your face on my couch.”
Abbey closed her eyes. The memory was a bolt of lightning, illuminating the dark pleasure of it. The helpless submission. The way her jaw had ached. She’d loved it.
“I got hard,” Toby confessed to the fire, his tone disgusted. “My jeans were tight. I was leaning against that wall, listening to my girlfriend suck off a stranger, and my dick was so hard it hurt. What kind of man does that?”
“A human one,” she said softly.
He barked a laugh. “Don’t give me that understanding shit. Not now.” He pushed off the mantel. “It got worse. Or better. Depending on your perspective. The sounds changed. Fabric tearing. Your sweater. He tore it. And you made this sound… this tiny, eager little whimper. Like you’d been waiting for him to destroy it.” He turned to face her, his expression grim. “He asked you a question. I barely heard it. ‘You want to come for me?’ And you… you just said ‘Yes.’ One word. So sure. So fucking ready.”
He walked toward her again, driven by the need to purge the memory onto her. “Then it was just… bodies. Skin slapping skin. Fast. Hard. Not like we do it. Not like I do it. This was… animal. And you were so loud. Gasping. Crying out. No words, just these broken little screams. And he was grunting, like he was digging a ditch. And I stood there. I stood there and I listened to you come. A real one. Your whole body, shaking the couch. I’ve never heard you sound like that. Not once. Not in three years.”
The tears came then, finally, tracking hot lines through the morning’s grime on his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away.
“You came again later,” he whispered. “Softer. Tired. After he’d… finished. I heard him spill inside you. I heard the wet push of it. And then you just… cried. Not sad crying. Relief. Like you’d been starving and someone finally gave you a meal.”
He was right in front of her now. She could see the golden flecks in his blue eyes, the faint scar on his chin from a childhood fall. The man she knew, fractured.
“That’s what broke me,” he said. “The relief in your crying. It meant every time I touched you, every time I made love to you, I was leaving you hungry. I was failing you. And I didn’t even know.”
The confession was more intimate than any sex. It laid bare a fundamental loneliness they’d both nurtured. His, in not seeing her. Hers, in not showing him.
“It wasn’t about you failing,” she said, her own tears falling now. They were the first honest tears she’d shed in the cabin—not of panic, not of guilt, but of grief for the distance between them. “It was about me hiding. I am hungry, Toby. But not for what he did. Not just for that.”
“Then what?” His hands came up, cupping her face, his thumbs brushing her tears away. His touch was tentative, as if she might shatter. Or as if he might. “What is it? Tell me what’s inside you. The thing I didn’t see.”
It was the question she’d been waiting for someone to ask for a lifetime.
“I want to feel… unmade,” she whispered, the words torn from a deep, secret place. “I want to not be the sweet girl. I want the thoughts in my head—the dark, filthy, screaming ones—to be seen. I want to be so desired it’s violent. I want to be praised for being dirty. I want to lose control and know someone else will catch me, even if they’re the one who pushed me.” She was sobbing now, the words a jumbled, aching cascade. “With you… I always have to be good. I have to be Abbey. With him, for a second, I was just… a body. A wanted, filthy body. And it was quiet in my head for the first time in years.”
Toby listened. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t look away in revulsion. He absorbed her broken confession, his own tears mirroring hers. When she finished, trembling and hollowed out, he leaned his forehead against hers. Their breath mingled, a warm, damp connection.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her. Something had shifted in his eyes. The hurt was still there, a vast and dark lake, but on its surface, a new resolve flickered. Not to be Edmund. But to be Toby—fully, unflinchingly.
“You think I don’t have those thoughts?” he asked, his voice low and rough. “You think when I’m drilling a fucking timber frame all day, my mind doesn’t go to dark places? About you? About bending you over my workbench? About hearing you beg?” A faint blush crept up his neck, but he held her gaze. “I just… I loved the girl next door so much, I was afraid to scare her. I was afraid if I showed her the animal in me, she’d run.”
He kissed her then. It wasn’t like any kiss they’d ever shared. It wasn’t sweet, or gentle, or reassuring. It was a claim. A question. A promise. His lips were firm, demanding her response. And she gave it, pouring everything into the connection—her guilt, her need, her terrifying hope.
When they broke apart, both were breathing heavily.
“Show me,” she pleaded, her fingers clutching the front of his thermal shirt. “Don’t be him. Be you. But show me the part you hid. The animal. Please, Toby.”
A shudder ran through him. He took her hand and led her to the center of the room, away from the couch, away from the ghost. The afternoon sun streamed through the windows, cutting bright geometric shapes on the wooden floor. It felt ceremonious.
He faced her. His hands went to the hem of her high-necked sweater. “This,” he said, fingering the fabric. “Hiding his marks. From me. Take it off.”
She obeyed, pulling the sweater over her head, letting it fall. She stood in her jeans and bra, the bruises on her throat and collarbone on full display in the cruel sunlight. He traced one with a fingertip, his touch so light it was agony. “These are mine now, too,” he stated. “Part of our history. Our fucked-up, complicated history.”
He unbuttoned her jeans, peeled them down her legs along with her underwear. He knelt before her, helping her step out of them. His eyes were level with her stomach. He leaned forward and pressed his lips just below her navel, a kiss of heartbreaking tenderness.
Then his hands were on her ass, pulling her closer, and his mouth was on her, right there.
He’d gone down on her before, but always softly, politely, as a prelude. This was different. This was intentional. Worshipful and wicked all at once. He didn’t start slow. His tongue laved a broad, firm stripe through her folds, seeking the nerve-rich peak of her clit immediately. He made a sound against her, a groan of pure satisfaction, as if he’d been craving her taste. And then he ate her like a man starved.
His tongue was relentless. Firm circles, then flat, rough strokes, then the pointed tip flicking with rapid precision. One hand remained clenched on the curve of her ass, holding her in place. The other slid between her legs, two fingers sliding into her without preamble.
She cried out, her hands flying to his hair. He was finger-fucking her with a steady, deep rhythm, his mouth never leaving her clit. He was opening her, stretching her, and she was still sore from the morning, but the pain blurred with the pleasure into something breathtakingly acute. She was wet, so wet, a different wetness than before—not the slickness of betrayal or the dry friction of anger, but the hot, rushing flow of being seen.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her, his breath scalding. “Let me hear you. I want every sound. The ones he heard, and all the ones he didn’t.”
He added a third finger, a delicious, burning stretch. His mouth grew more insistent, sucking her clit gently between his lips, his tongue dancing over the sensitized bud. The coil in her belly, damaged and distrustful from the emotional carnage, began to rewind itself, tighter and hotter than she could remember.
“Toby… I’m… I’m gonna…” she choked, her legs shaking.
“Come,” he growled, the vibration against her most intimate flesh sending her spiraling. “Come in my mouth. Let me have this. Let me taste you coming for me.”
It broke her. The orgasm crashed through her with no elegance, a raw, convulsing wave that ripped a guttural scream from her throat. She bucked against his face, but he held her firm, his mouth and fingers working her through it, drawing out every last pulse until she was whimpering, oversensitive, her knees giving way.
He caught her, easing her down to the sun-warmed floorboards. He loomed over her, shedding his own clothes with quick, frantic movements. His cock was erect, thick and flushed, standing proudly from a thatch of dark blond hair. It was familiar, and yet now it looked like a weapon of salvation.
He knelt between her splayed thighs. His eyes drank her in—the spent, trembling body, the marks on her skin, the sheen of sweat on her belly. He gripped his cock at the base, holding it steady. The broad, slick head nudged against her entrance, still fluttering from her climax.
“Look at me,” he commanded, and she forced her bleary eyes to focus on his. “You’re Abbey. And you’re mine. And I’m about to fuck you with everything I have. Everything I’ve ever held back.”
He pushed inside.
It was an invasion of pure, unabashed need. He filled her in one long, slow, devastating stroke, burying himself to the hilt. She gasped, her inner muscles clamping around him, the stretch a perfect, full ache. He didn’t move. He let her adjust, his body trembling with the effort of his control.
“God, you feel…” he whispered, awe in his voice. “You feel like home. Even now. Especially now.”
Then he began to move. It wasn’t Edmund’s brutal, impersonal pace. It wasn’t his own earlier, angry punishing rhythm. This was something else. A deep, rolling, purposeful claiming. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each thrust a deliberate, soul-deep reunion. His hips moved with a primal certainty, the slap of their skin a solid, rhythmic beat in the quiet cabin.
He leaned down, kissing her, swallowing her moans. “Tell me what you want,” he breathed against her mouth. “Right now.”